show only the beginnning of articles in the home page

I want my wordpress theme to only show a few lines of the articles in the home page, and then some dots (ellipses) at the en开发者_开发知识库d with a "read more" link. How can this be done? I'm using the Elegant Grunge 1.0.3 theme right now.

You need to use the_excerpt() function to do what you want. I don't know your theme but may be it have an option to do it.